


Too Much Space Between Us

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I would tag MCD if it were MCD, Missing Eliot, Multi, mistaken for dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 03:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8270666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Hardison and Parker lost Eliot on a job gone wrong. They've come to bring Aimee Eliot's last message. Quinn is still refusing to give up hope that Eliot is alive.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tidal_race](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tidal_race/gifts).



> Based on the prompt 'things you said with too much space between us', which my brain read as 'because you physically can't be there because you are believed dead, so here's my last words to you'. I am very sorry tidal_race.

Hardison watches the shadow inside the glass as it wavers towards him. He finds he doesn’t want it to reach him. He doesn’t want it to coalesce into Aimee. As long as she’s on that side of the door, he hasn’t told her yet, not in person - he can pretend she doesn’t know.

She hesitates before pulling open the door and Hardison hears Parker shift next to him. It’s not like any of them want to do this. 

When the door opens, Aimee looks first at Parker, then at Hardison, and her jaw is tense, her eyes determined. Fierce. They’re also red. The skin around them is blotchy and her face looks…wrong, like she’s tried pasting on a mask that doesn’t fit.

“Took your time,” she says, and turns before either of them can answer.

Exchanging a glance, they follow her into the house. The living room is somewhere neither one of them has ever been, and Hardison looks around at the soft furniture and tasteful decoration and sees Eliot in the room. It’s jarring, to catch sight of a sword on a wooden stand and know it’s Eliot’s, in this place that Eliot has his second life. 

It’s never bothered Hardison, knowing Eliot’s been building something here, here with Aimee and with Quinn, apart from his team. It’s not been a problem, because it’s never felt like Eliot’s left them. He’s still their Eliot, still their protector and their friend, and he’s always been there if they’ve had a job. Hell, he’s been there just to hang out. The man is a genius at time management, splitting his two families and his work. 

Now, it hits Hardison that when Eliot isn’t with Parker and him, he’s here. He’s sprawled on the settee with Aimee cuddled up close, or he’s working in the kitchen Hardison glimpsed on the way through, or he’s bickering with Quinn about their weird hitter crap. 

Somehow, seeing the place without Eliot in it makes it harder to ignore the traces of the guy. 

Aimee gestures to a settee and they sit, Hardison holding his table carefully. What’s on it is backed up six ways from Sunday, but it feels a little like he’s bringing something precious, something irreplaceable. It feels a little like he’s carrying ashes. 

No. It feels like he’s bringing home a flag. 

“Where’s Quinn?” Parker asks. Her voice is subdued, the way it’s been for the past four days. 

“Shaking any tree he can damn well find,” Aimee says. 

“He’s left you alone?” Hardison asks, not quite managing to squash the note of judgment. 

“Quinn hasn’t left me,” Aimee says. “Quinn’s gonna come back.”

The words are bitten off. Sharp. Fractured. 

Hardison takes a breath. Nods. He hasn’t any right to the anger he feels, the same clawing sense of rage that’s sat beneath his skin this past week. The need to be doing something is still there, despite everything, so he can’t really blame Quinn for keeping going. Eliot wouldn’t give up for any of them. 

It’s been a bedrock certainty of Hardison’s life for years: Eliot would always come for him. Eliot would always see him safe.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Aimee grimaces.

“I don’t want apologies,” she says. Perhaps she sees Hardison flinch, or picks up on the tension in Parker’s body, because she closes her eyes and almost, almost, lets the mask drop. Her voices wavers like her shadow-image in the glass when she opens her eyes and goes on. “No need to be apologizing. It ain’t your fault.”

“He was saving me,” Hardison says, and manages not to rub at the memory-ache of pain in his leg. He’s got the limp under control, but he’s starting to think it will never really go. It’s what made him so slow Eliot had to double back for him. “If I’d moved faster-”

“Eliot’s life was keeping the people he loved safe,” Aimee says. “You think you could have stopped him? It’s not-” She shakes her head. “Ain’t no-one could tell Eliot Spencer not to throw himself in harm’s way for the sake of someone he loved. Least with you it was love, and not some duty. Or something…something that’d eat away at him. You all helped him pull himself round, back to what was good.”

Hardison doesn’t tell her it’s not much comfort. He isn’t here so she can make him feel better, anyway. It might have been Eliot’s job to keep Parker and him safe, but it’s not Aimee’s to make them feel better.

“Being able to be with you, that helped, too,” Hardison says, even though he knows Eliot would never have come back to Aimee if he’d still thought himself to be the man who’d worked for people like Moreau. “It…he was happy.”

‘Happy’ isn’t a word he can quite apply to Eliot. A kind of glee, a sense of satisfaction, even a deep joy, yes. But ‘happy’? Eliot was quick flashes of delight layered in with ten kinds of angry, but he’d mellowed, to an extent, once it became clear he had a place back with Aimee. The thing with Quinn had been more of a surprise, but Parker had just shrugged and Hardison had looked back on that job with the dam and wondered how he’d missed it. 

“He was Eliot,” Aimee says, as though that means something all by itself. She shifts, pulling the cardigan she’s wearing more closely about herself. It isn’t the slightest bit cold in the room. “Now, you didn’t come all this way to sit and talk around the topic. Why’re you here, Alec?”

Parker sits forward, her hands clasped between her knees like that’ll help to hold her in. Hardison is grateful Sophie will be in Portland by the time they get back, because he’s doing the best he can but he knows this is one of the hardest things Parker’s ever had to process. Her eyes are as hard as he’s ever seen them, at odds with the lack of fire in her voice.

“Eliot sent you a message,” she says. “We didn’t want you to watch it on your own.”

Parker insisted they bring it. If you couldn’t bring a body, you brought the message. She insisted. Hardison thought of snow and ice and losing track of three members of his team at once, and booked the tickets to bring them here. 

Now, he makes himself bring up the right screen, standing to hand it to Aimee. She looks at it for a long moment before taking it.

“Am I gonna want to watch this?” she asks. 

Hardison shrugs.

“I don’t know.”

“Should I wait for Quinn?” she asks next. 

Hardison shakes his head. 

“I haven’t watched it. He filmed it before… He filmed it before. Just left me instructions to get it to you. In case.”

Hardison didn’t used to know that Eliot did this, but after Nate and Sophie left the guy told him, over beer and in the middle of a hockey match, that he kept these messages updated and that he wanted Hardison to know how to access them. Hardison has a message of his own, waiting for him back home. So does Parker. Neither of them have watched them yet. 

“There’s one for Quinn?” Aimee asks. 

If there is, Hardison hasn’t been able to find it. He opens his mouth and has nothing to say. 

Aimee nods. 

“Okay, then. Can you…? Can you stay?”

He wasn’t sure she’d want that, but sitting there on her own, almost drowning in a sweater that can’t be hers, Aimee looks far less fierce and indestructible than she looked the last time Hardison saw her, years back. He nods. 

She sits and stares at the screen for a while before tapping on it, and Hardison feels Parker’s hand reach for his forearm as Eliot’s voice filters out, warm and there.

“Hey,” he says. “Gotta be honest. I’m kinda hoping you never see this. But I’m not stupid. I ain’t as fast as I used to be and we both know there’s gonna come a time I don’t get out of the way. Hell, I must have some guardian angel to have made it out of half the stuff I’ve been through. So, if I haven’t made it back? Know I made my choice and I don’t regret it. Okay?”

Aimee lifts a hand to her mouth. Hardison doesn’t comment. He doesn’t say anything about the way her eyes glisten, either. Her gaze is fixed on the screen.

“I regret plenty of things,” Eliot says, “but I don’t regret keeping those two live-wires safe. They’re mine. And…that’s something I wanted to say to you. Aimee, something I do regret is not fighting to keep what we had, but I found you again. We found each other again. And we got found by that over-sized violent puppy who’s moved in with us, and it’s good. It’s real good, Aimee. And I don’t like to think of the people I love being alone. So. I got something to ask you. You think you can do one thing for me?”

Aimee nods, her hand still over her mouth. Hardison feels pressure behind his own eyelids. Eliot hasn’t ever told them he loves them, not to their faces. 

“Can you keep an eye on them? On Parker and on Hardison? And on Quinn? Quinn will keep them safe, I know he will, if they’ll let him. We already talked about it. But they need more than that. And you deserve more than that, too. So. If I know Hardison, he’ll bring you these words. I bet he’s there right now, being emotional all over our house.”

Parker barks out a laugh, small and pale in comparison to her usual ones, but far, far louder than she’s been in days. Her hand on Hardison’s arm tightens.

“And I bet Parker’s there, too. You know how much they mean to me. You know what you mean to me. Just…be there for each other, all right? I need to know you’ll be there now I’m not.”

Parker lets go of Hardison as Aimee’s tears fall, and he watches her cross the room to perch on the arm of Aimee’s chair. They don’t touch, but Aimee leans ever so slightly towards Parker. He knows the message isn’t much longer than this. 

“I love you, Aimee,” Eliot says. 

It’s the last thing he says. 

Aimee’s quiet, frozen still, for almost a minute. A minute’s a lot longer than feels right, and Hardison almost speaks twice, but keeps himself back. Eventually, Aimee moves, folding over the tablet and curling up. Next to her, Parker reaches out a hand and lets it hover over Aimee’s curved spine. She shoots Hardison a look and he nods, watching as she closes the gap and strokes a hand down Aimee’s back. It’s awkward and it’s weird and it has Aimee letting out a sob.

She cries for a good while, but when she’s done she straightens and pats Parker’s knee. 

“I have tea,” she says, and that’s all that’s said about any of it. “Come on. I’ll make us all a cup.”

***

They’re in the kitchen, plates from dinner soaking in the sink, when the front door crashes open and Quinn arrives. He looks wild, his hair half out of it’s ponytail and his body language near feral.

“Aimee?” he says, even though he’s looking right at them. 

“They brought me a message from Eliot,” Aimee says, sounding calm. “You okay?”

“I will be,” Quinn says. “Glad you’re here, Hardison. Parker. We’re gonna need you.” 

He grins, and it’s almost as bad as Eliot at his worst. Quinn would keep them safe, Eliot had said. If they let him. Hardison’s worked with Quinn a few times now, since Eliot and the other guy hooked up and moved in together, but this right here does not feel safe. 

“Need us for what?” Parker asks. 

“I’ve got a lead,” Quinn says, and it’s gloating. He sounds almost drunk. 

“Man, I searched everywhere,” Hardison says. “You think I’d have left him if-?”

“You couldn’t find this,” Quinn says. “Nothing digital. No on-line anything. Totally dark. Had to work through ten people just to get a hint of where to start looking, but I found it. We need to get to Milan.”

“Milan? Why would he be-?” Parker asks.

“You don’t wanna know how I got it,” Quinn says, doing nothing to dispel the image Hardison’s forming of a wolf on the hunt, “but you all need to stop with the mourning. I found him. I found Eliot. And he’s still alive.”

“Quinn,” Aimee says. There’s hope there, and warning. Hardison knows how she feels. “Don’t… Just don’t… not if…”

The worst of the manic energy fades from Quinn and his face creases into something softer. He crosses the room and kneels by Aimee’s chair, taking her face between his hands. 

“Aimee,” he says, “if I was running on ‘maybe’ I’d have been back yesterday. This ain’t some hope. He’s alive. And he needs us to go and get him.”

“Us?” Parker asks. 

Quinn nods, as decisive as Parker or Nate or Eliot himself ever were. 

“Us,” he says. “His family. Eliot needs all of his family to go save him.”

“Nate, too?” Parker asks. Hardison can see her energy levels rising. She’ll be almost vibrating in a minute. “And Sophie?”

“All of us,” Quinn says. “These guys ain’t gonna know what’s hit them. You in?”

“Hells, yes,” Hardison says, his phone already out to tell the others about the change of plan. He feels like crying and he isn’t sure why. This is better than he’s been able to hope for since he exhausted his last avenue four days ago, since he had to make that call to tell Nate and Sophie that Eliot was gone. “You sure this is him? You sure this is our Eliot?”

“There’s only one Eliot,” Quinn says, which isn’t quite what Hardison meant. “And I’m sure. Hardison, he told me to keep you safe if he couldn’t. You think I’d drag you halfway round the world if I wasn’t sure? This is him.”

“Okay, then,” Parker says, and without Hardison seeing it happen she has her hand on Aimee’s shoulder. “Let’s go steal us back our Eliot.”


End file.
